Membership engagement
Membership engagement remained a priority during the year, with the Member Engagement Committee selecting three areas to focus on following the recommendations from the last member survey:
- career journey support - the ambition is to improve communication around the breadth of continuing professional development (CPD) and to refresh mentoring to be scalable and accessible for the whole career journey
- students and early careers - an early careers working group has been formed to better understand the needs and expectations of student and early careers members
- volunteer engagement - the goal is to ensure all volunteering opportunities are openly advertised, to help volunteers build their networks, and to improve recognition of volunteer contributions.
Member communities’ activity remained predominantly virtual in 2022 enabling members to access knowledge sharing and networking opportunities
Member communities’ activity remained predominantly virtual in 2022 enabling members in all regions to access knowledge sharing and networking opportunities.
34 member groups and 19 special interest groups delivered programmes of networking events, webinars and dinners with some of the most active groups including the Aberdeen Member Group, the Process Management and Control Special Interest Group (SIG), Biochemical SIG, Fluid Mixing SIG, Pharma SIG and various groups across Malaysia.
More than 10,000 people attended 219 technical webinars, plus face-to-face events were re-introduced following the pandemic, with more and more physical events taking place by the end of the year.
Special interest groups held 11 physical events and member groups held 32, including annual dinners in Ireland and Aberdeen. Feedback from the dinners was overwhelmingly positive with more groups declaring their wish to hold annual dinners from 2023.
To further support early career chemical engineers, IChemE held a Global Careers Day in October, with over 360 students and recent graduates receiving advice and guidance from practicing chemical engineers from a wide variety of industries.
The sessions were held across four different time zones to cater to a global audience. The recordings from the webinars held during the day are available in the early career area of the website.
IChemE’s President David Bogle visited members and stakeholders in Australia, Malaysia and Singapore
Following a two-year hiatus in overseas travel due to the pandemic, IChemE’s President visited members and stakeholders in Australia, Malaysia and Singapore in September.
With over 5,000 IChemE members based in these regions, the purpose of the President’s visit was to demonstrate the Institution’s continued commitment to members based outside of the UK, meeting the regional boards, university departments and corporate partners across the area to discuss governance structures, updates within the Institution and IChemE involvement in local activities.
Two town hall sessions were held virtually in May and November giving members the opportunity to hear from their senior leaders and put questions to the panel on topics ranging from sustainability, collaboration with other engineering institutions and membership growth.